Blogging has taken American politics by storm over the past few years - picking up where the establishment media leaves off: blog authors have taken an increasingly important seat in our national discourse. Whether filling gaps in traditional reporting by serving as a source of investigative journalism, calling their audiences to action, or pushing select issues and races into the national spotlight, blog authors and their audiences have become an undeniable force.

Political Activism Online

The number of Americans relying on the Internet for political news doubled between the midterm elections of 2002 and 2006, and close to 18% of Americans claimed they relied primarily on the Internet for news during the 2004 Presidential election.¹

Delving further into usage patterns uncovers a number of interesting trends. Relatively young broadband users, for example, say that the Internet is a more important political news source than newspapers.

A recent study also found that 23% of campaign Internet users became online political activists:

• 8% of campaign internet users posted their own political commentary to a newsgroup, website or blog
• 13% of them forwarded or posted someone else's political commentary
• 1% of them created political audio or video recordings
• 8% of them forwarded or posted someone else's political audio or video recordings

The Audience for Political Blogs

Approximately 57 million adults, or 39% of Internet users, read blogs. In addition, 12 million adults, or 8% of Internet users, keep a blog.²

The daily audience for political blogs, in contrast to all blog readers, is disproportionately affluent, educated, and partisan. 58% of this audience, which has a generally unfavorable view of main stream media, "strongly agrees" that blogs provide information that is otherwise unavailable.

With approximately 19% of daily political blog readers identifying themselves as either "strongly liberal" or "liberal," the audience for political blogs has a distinct left skew. There are over 2,200 self described "progressive" blogs. These blog authors are highly active, collectively posting approximately 1,000 new articles per day.

A Timeline of Growth

As the awareness of the value of online activism has grown, so has the adoption of online marketing by political and issue oriented advertisers. Spending by traditional issue oriented advertisers online (e.g., The Body Shop, Patagonia, Whole Foods) has been complemented by campaign and issue specific advertisers.

• 2004: the Howard Dean Phenomenon, MoveOn.org
• 2005: fundraising success of Paul Hacket, a previously little known congressional candidate
• 2006: defeat in the primary of Sen. Joe Lieberman by Ned Lamont; Sen. George Allen, a strong incumbent, is beaten because of racist remarks captured on a YouTube clip that spread like wildfire on the political blogs
• 2007: Obama's small dollar online fundraising; Hillary Clinton YouTube video

The emergence of progressive, issue oriented advertising (e.g. Corporate Social Responsibility, the Green movement, Organic foods and products) continues to draw increasing attention to progressive media outlets.

¹Pew Internet & American Life Project, Jan. 2007
²Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2006